Friday's best bets, by Greg Wood

If it is possible to have too much of a good thing, then seven race meetings on a Friday in mid-May is nudging the boundary and anyone who manages to catch every snippet of the action this afternoon, either live or via replays, deserves a medal (an initiative for Rod Street and his team at Great British Racing to consider, perhaps).

The Dee Stakes is the most interesting race of the day with an eye on the future, and though there is yet another small field for this Group Three contest, Contributer (2.15) should bring a little class to the proceedings. He had a very quiet campaign at two, though the maiden at Newmarket's July meeting in which he made his racecourse debut is often as strong as any all year, and Ghurair and Dundonnell were among those ahead of him as he finished a promising sixth.

He lost his maiden tag at Wolverhampton next time up in November, then returned in a conditions event at Newbury last month which he won in a solid time despite a small field and steady pace. Today's race will be a much better indicator of how high he can go, but it will be disappointing if he cannot justify favouritism on the way to better things.

The Ormonde Stakes looks like a match between last year's winner Memphis Tennessee and Luca Cumani's Mount Athos (2.45), who represents the Chester fanatic Dr Marwan Koukash and will be well primed for his seasonal debut. Storm Moon (3.15) and Cafe Society (5.00) also make some appeal at the prices on the Chester card, while Professor (7.40), who had to pick his way through a big field on his seasonal debut at the Craven meeting, should have fewer problems at Ascot this evening.

Tipping competition, day four

We're experimenting with a scoreless week in our competition, which started yesterday. The winners so far:

GET THOSE TIPS IN EARLY! In the event of a tie at the end of the week, the winner will be the tipster who, from among those tied on the highest score, posted their tips earliest on the final day.

This week's prize is a copy of 'The Suffragette Derby', a soon-to-be-published hardback by Michael Tanner, telling the story of the 1913 Derby, now almost exactly a century ago, when Emily Davison walked onto the course at Epsom during the race and was knocked down by the King's horse. Tanner, we are told, has "scoured public and private sources . . . to debunk the myths and reveal for the first time the definitive account of what led to the events of that day and how they unfolded". If you don't win, you can buy a copy here.

If you go to this page and use the code: 'GUARDIAN', you can buy the book at a discounted price of £14.99, saving £5!

This being a short week, we're going to try a scoreless experiment. Since Mr Hayler left the paper in December, the remaining members of the team have been under increased pressure of time and, if we can make this competition work without daily score updates, we'd like to do so. BUT we will provide the identity of the winner by 6pm on Friday, in an effort to compensate for this change.

As ever, our champion will be the tipster who returns the best profit to notional level stakes of £1 at starting price on our nominated races, of which there will be four each day up until Friday. Non-runners count as losers.

If you have not joined in so far this week, you are welcome to do so today, but you will start on -9.